Illustration by Emily Thomas.
They’re creepy and they’re spooky, mysterious and kooky, they’re all together ooky, and they exposed the hypocrisy of Reagan-era America; Addams Family Values (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1993) turns 27 today.
Invented by cartoonist, Charles Addams, in 1938, the Addams family are intended to satirise and upend what was considered the ideal American nuclear family with their macabre and twisted ways. Addams Family Values is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek title, released as America exited Reaganism in favour of a Bush presidency. Throughout Reagan’s campaign and presidency, the term “family values” was often used to push traditional gender roles and the marginalisation of LGBT people, by virtue of the implication that a two parent nuclear family was simply its only valid form. While Reagan preached “family values”, his presidency oversaw both the war on drugs, which disproportionately incarcerated Black Americans, and brutal crackdowns on immigration, which split up countless families in the process.
Addams Family Values sees pre-teen siblings, Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) shipped off to summer camp against their will. The attendees of Camp Chippewa could easily be mistaken for Young Conservative of America members, and are treated to a summer where their only task is “to learn, to grow, and to just plain have fun. Because that’s what being privileged is all about!” according to the frighteningly chipper camp counsellors, Becky (Christine Baranski) and Gary (Peter MacNicol). Immaculately dressed and expensively educated, the Chippewa children are snobbish and cruel, actively bullying and excluding Wednesday, Pugsley, and the other children whom Becky describes as “pale, chubby, and odd.” Although on the nose, the portrayal of the dark side of WASP America essentially shows the cruelty and elitism inherent in the upper echelons of society. The Addams are forced to participate in a pageant portraying a whitewashed version of Thanksgiving, where the Native Americans are depicted as savages, and are played by all of the campers who are people of colour or have disabilities, contrasted with the popular campers, who play the Pilgrims. Wednesday, as Pocahontas, goes rogue, changing the script, and pointing out the genocidal nature of colonisation, saying “years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the roadsides. You will play golf and enjoy hot hors d’oeuvres.”
During an archery lesson at Camp Chippewa, which the unpopular and unsporty children fail miserably at, Pugsley shoots and kills an American bald eagle. Gary, in horror, asks“aren’t they extinct?” to be met with Wednesday’s deadpan reply “they are now”, symbolizing both the fall of traditional values, and the perceived threat of the outsider in 1990s America.
In attempting to subvert the image of the typical American family, the matriarch and patriarch (Morticia and Gomez—Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia) are portrayed as being deeply in love. While sitcoms and films often fall back on the trope of the nagging wife and the husband who is disinterested in his partner or his children, Gomez and Morticia are utterly obsessed with one another. If this is the opposite of the typical American family, what does this really say about the nature of our relationships and families today? It’s also evident how their children model their relationships on the happy example set by their parents. When escaping from camp, Wednesday is seen kissing her boyfriend Joel goodbye through the gate she has just hopped over, saying “mon cher” just as she has seen Gomez and Morticia do many times.
While their house may be filled with cobwebs, corpses, a butler who looks like Frankenstein’s monster and a severed hand for an assistant, the values fundamental to the Addams family are love, acceptance and kindness. However, as seen from Wednesday’s burning of the pageant, set alight with her obnoxious camp mates still on stage, they aren’t afraid to fight fire with fire. While the plot arc of the relationship between the new nanny Debbie (a fabulous Joan Cusack) and Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd) reveals she is marrying him for his money and attempting to kill him, Debbie is initially welcomed into the family with open arms, despite her radically different personality, appearance and background.
Although unconventional heroes, the Addams family’s enduring popularity isn’t just because of their gothic charm and endless wit. The manner in which Addams Family Values satirises and subverts conventional notions of respectability and tradition forces the viewer to confront what’s really worth valuing.
Addams Family Values is available to stream on Netflix.
